During lockdown me and my daughter baked lots. She wanted to bake Daddy a special birthday cake and we found the recipe online, it was a 2-tiered cake, it looked amazing. We wrote a list of all the ingredients we needed and popped to the shop, guess what, we left the list on the side at home!
I went from memory and got everything, or so I thought. Got home started baking and I’d forgotten one ingredient. Luckily I had something which I could use as a substitute. It tasted good and looked fine but it wasn’t the same as what we had planned.
Having all the right ingredients for your recipe is the same as having all the right ingredients to build your brand.
Let me explain…
Your brand is the part of your business that outlines who your customers are, all the elements – language, colours, logo, fonts – that your customers relate to and how your brand will stay consistent.
It is far more than just a logo, a few colours and a website. Of course, these are some very important elements within your checklist. But your branding ingredients can be broken down into sections – identity, strategy, visual – looking at these sections in detail can really help you build your brand and keep it consistent.
When looking at your Brand Strategy, you will be thinking and outlining things such as, your target audience, your niche, vision and mission statements, personality, and messaging. You may think that your target audience is obvious, but the more you drill down into who your perfect client would be the more concise your brand be.
Brand Identity, this is how your brand will come across to your customers. It can’t just be a logo, it needs to have the personality of your brand. This can be very subtle by using colours in particular ways or could be very obvious with graphic icons used. The identity also needs to look at the type of imagery you will use and the colours you will use. This is also where branding guidelines should be developed, this document will help you and anyone else using your brand keep it consistent and enable you to build a recognisable brand.
Brand Visuals are how your brand will be made visible. From items such as business stationery to websites, vehicle graphics to uniform. Looking at these early on in brand building will ensure you have a cohesive brand that becomes recognisable to your target audience.
To sum everything up, you need to look at lots of different things as part of your brand to ensure you have all the right ingredients to build your brand, just like you need all the right ingredients to bake the perfect cake.
For help building your brand get in touch and book a call with me to discuss how I can help you.